


Playing for Keeps

by afullrevolution



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Memory Loss, Reconciliation, Stiles!bartender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afullrevolution/pseuds/afullrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There once was a werewolf who walked into a bar" should be the start of a joke. But it isn't. It isn't funny at all. Because all Stiles can feel, standing behind the counter, is relief. He doesn’t feel like laughing at all. Just the rush of 'finally'. That this is what he's been waiting for. The last ship out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing for Keeps

**Author's Note:**

> Possible warnings for language, spelling and/or grammar errors, and a shot in the head. Memory loss, inaccurate references to hospital practices for gun shot victims, manipulation.
> 
> Because someone brought up that old saying "three in the head, you know they're dead."
> 
> And because I got sick of reading the minutes from old meetings.

"There once was a werewolf who walked into a bar" should be the start of a joke. But it isn't. It isn't funny at all. Because all Stiles can feel, standing behind the counter, is relief. He doesn’t feel like laughing at all. Just a moment of out-of-body sensation, the sudden sag in his shoulders, as if someone pulled out the pin that had been holding him like a bug to the wall. The rush of 'finally'. That this is what he's been waiting for. The last ship out. 

He's been vibrating in his skin for almost a week now, not knowing who he can to turn to. There are lots of things he doesn't know and even more that he does, but who to trust is definitely in the first category. 

He's pretty sure he knows the important bits. The how to keep himself alive bits. Mostly. Because clearly he didn't know enough of something to not get shot and he's not sure if he's missing a piece now that could be key to preventing a repeat. He’s kind of hoping that it won’t ever be an issue again.

But still, he likes to tell himself that he still knows the important stuff. Like how he knows that the information on his id is fake. He didn't have a bloody clue as to the why behind his fake id, couldn't even begin to guess. He just figures it's more important that he does knows how to mix a drink - which is rather important when one evidently works in a bar. He assumes he must have been at it for a while because he certainly knows how to smile, to flirt, to pull out information one thread at a time to save for a later date.

He also knows he's working here because he'd been working here. Because it had been the one number on the one business card in his wallet when he'd woken up. His one chance at the past - a cold call that had earned him an angry 'Stiles' (not the name on his id) at the sound of his voice, had gotten him chewed out for his missed shift. Evidently one wasn't supposed to skip shifts at a new place of employment. 

He hadn't explained, didn't tell them what happened. He didn't think he knew them well enough for that. 

He didn't go into how he'd woken up the day he called in a hospital. That he'd opened his eyes to mint green walls with an IV in his arm and a bandage around his head. His chart claimed he'd been shot in the head. It claimed it had happened almost 24 hours before. It also made claims about his name, his birthday. He was sure glad he read those, because the doctors wouldn't have let him walk out so fast without them. 

He’d signed himself out against medical advice. After the harried officer in uniform had taken his statement. Wrote up his inventive story about going to school in the area. About living alone at said address on his license. Promised that no, office, he wouldn’t be leaving town. 

He’d said all those ridiculous, meaningless words and then fled. He just couldn't stay there. Not there. There was something stifling in the air, the nurses overworked and tired, the extra hospital beds lining the halls with patients in them. He had determined within hours that there was no one to worry about him and no reason for him to lay in a bed taking up someone else's space. 

He ran because he didn’t and still doesn’t want anyone to come and finish the job they started. 

It might not have been safe, but he’d still called that number on the one card in his wallet. He'd found the bar, mixed some drinks, flirted with the patrons. He knew this. How to do this. Where he learned it, he couldn't have said.

Another one of those many things he didn't know was just how much of a chance this job was.

But. But. There wasn’t anything else and Stiles needed money and got a free meal at the bar. Even if it was pickled. So he went to fill his shifts, knit cap pulled down over the staples holding together the still-healing wound on his head, making him look like a hipster. As if the worn jeans, thread bare t-shirt and button up-shirt, the well-used doc martins were a style-choice and not his only clothes. 

He also broke into the boss's office, into his safe, to look for his W-2s, for any information on himself. He didn't find anything. Yipee ki yay. Evidently he was working under the table. 

Somehow, that made him feel a little better about staying.

Stiles undid the top button of his shirt to increase his tips. And because there wasn't anything else hold on to, he grabbed this tie and squeezed.

Which is why he is standing behind the counter in a run down bar when the werewolf walks in. 

It's not even the first werewolf. There had been other werewolves that had walked into his bar. Wolves in tight little groups, wolves using the junction to get from point a to b. Always moving on, always twitching when they moved away from one another. Always a pack.

Stiles evidently knows how to watch for these things. To tell at a moment's glance if someone's a werewolf or a witch, who they are with and who they might be waiting for. He can see the telltale signs when his patrons aren't quite ... what other people think they are. Stiles finds he knows a lot about werewolves. Couldn't have said how of course. But his head was like a fucking encyclopedia on the subject. But then he is also hyper-aware of when to use salt water instead of tap because the patron in front of him crawled out of the sea and left her skin under a rock. He knows what to bring them, even if he pretends he doesn’t. He knows that he is supposed to keep his head down and his knowledge close.

So yeah, he argues to himself that he knows the important stuff. About how there is this small, select world he clearly belongs to based on the information left in his head. 

But there are some things he would like to know. Like where he lived. The place printed on his fake-license is a family home with little kids with dark hair running around in the front yard. They don't look at him when he walks by, even when he pauses and catches one of the kid's eyes. No recognition. Not where he should be then. He walks away and no one calls after him.

He leaves without a backward glance, moves on. Stays at the YMCA, figures it's not like he owns anything he needs to worry about disappearing. Only the small duffel that the policewoman who'd interviewed him claimed had been with his bleeding body when the medics had arrived. Just a bag with a change of clothes and a wallet that had clearly been riffled through. Cash and any kind of bankcards gone. 

He doesn't think that there had been anything in there to warrant a bullet in the head. But that is something he doesn't know for sure.

He’s feeling alone, itchy, desperate. He can’t seem to sleep, not with one eye always open in a large room, no one at his back. He thinks he must have been used to living in a group. In a pack.

Then there is this guy, this werewolf walking into his bar. And Stiles could just cry.

Because this wolf walks in alone. His eyes dart around the space before he slides into a seat at the bar. There isn’t any one watching this wolf’s back and the tension in his shoulders says he's not waiting for anyone. 

Stiles doesn’t think that this wolf has anyone else. 

It's like that. Stiles can see it, has the space to watch because there isn't much cluttering his memories. Just room to build new ones. An open book to write in and Stiles is damn well going to fill the page with whatever he pleases. 

Stiles almost feels like the wolf’s being handed over to him on a silver platter.

This, this Stiles knows how to work. 

Has to work, because Stiles hasn’t got anything else. 

Stiles plays his cards carefully over the next week, one after the other. The first night he plays the game with the goal of making sure that the guy comes back. Stiles wins and can’t seem to stop the grin when the guy appears for a second night.

The week is spent grinning, standing close for just long enough for the werewolf to get his scent, making sure to inhale deeply whenever he leans forward. Touching him whenever possible. Drinks are passed over with fingers sliding together. Smiles under eye-lashes, never glaring directly in the guy's eyes, head always tilted to the side. Always on offer, always submissive. 

He's bating the guy, putting himself on that proverbial hook, but the werewolf is alone and wolves hate to be alone. Stiles hates it too. And this guy's world is his world. He doesn't know what happened to his group, whoever he was with, but no one has come for him and that must mean they're gone or they've left him.

After a week, Stiles shows his remaining cards, throws them on the table, tosses caution to the wind and himself at werewolf. He puts a drink in front of the guy and tells him he gets off at 2.00am. The wolf looks surprised, the tell in the twitch of his eyebrows and the flare of nostrils in an otherwise straight face. But Stiles can read that, evidently knows how to recognize shock in a blank face. Can see what it means and he knows that the wolf will sit there almost without moving for the rest of the night, waiting him out. Werewolves were like that. Impulsive as shit, but loyal as the fucking moon. They always come back for you. (He can't bear to think what that might say about any pack he may have once known.)

Which is why, Stiles claims to himself, he wants this one. Which is why Stiles is going with this plan, as much as there is one. He wants that loyalty, to never be left again. Knows that if the guy takes the bait, he'll never leave, no matter how spotty Stiles' past. Wolves were just built like that. 

Stiles is right. The wolf does wait, brushes off the few people that try to talk to him. Watches Stiles as if the guy is trying to read him. Trying to understand what is lying beneath the surface. 

Jokes on him, Stiles thinks, because there isn't anything to find. Stiles has tried looking himself, stared in a mirror for an hour, and there just isn't anything there. There might have been, before the hospital scrubbed him down, shaved his head to staple it back together again. 

Stiles wonders if they had found the bullet if traces of his memories would have been visible across the surface. 

The werewolf sits at the counter without a word until the end of his shift, while Stiles wipes the bar down, arranges bottles, restocks the bar. He drifts after Stiles when Stiles takes the mats out to the back to hose them down. As if he doesn't want to let Stiles out of his sight. As if it's Stiles that might bolt. As if Stiles isn't so desperate that he's pretty much handed himself over to the wolf. 

The wold needn't have worried. He follows passively when the wolf leads Stiles to his car, lets the wolf walk him into his by-the-week-shit-apartment and climbs into the wolf's bed. He's exhausted after nights of sleeping with his eyes open and the wolf seems to know that. Let's him pass out, tucked carefully against his body. Stiles is finally able to sleep soundly, curled in some unknown guy's arms.

\-----

Stiles makes up stories for himself - about himself - that soon become one long story. How he was part of a family of werewolves. How he came from a huge loving family full of hugs. He doesn't write into his story how he came to be alone. He skips that bit, preferring not to imagine his fictional family falling apart, scattered, hunted across the country. 

He does make up a story about the shooting - about how he was tracked down by hunters as he fled from ... something ... how he took two of them out with a knife before they put a bullet in him. How sirens had the hunters running before they could do it again. He knows it's fiction, but its his story and he dares anyone to tell him he's wrong. 

There's no one who knows, no one to tell, no one to respond. 

Until the werewolf walked into the bar and they start playing house. 

He's pretty sure that the werewolf knows Stiles' is playing him. And he's damn sure that the werewolf is playing him right back. 

Wolves hate being alone and this one used to be so very alone.

Stiles makes sure to make himself indispensable. As necessary for the werewolf as breathing. To touch constantly, to smile when he is touched, to lean in and let his muscles relax, to press his face into the guy's shoulder after he curls into his body. To expose the left side of his neck and his stomach after rolling on his back.

Stiles makes a game – a very serious study – of cataloging his werewolf, taking mental notes, trying to figure Derek out. It doesn’t take long before it becomes habit, automatic response. 

Neither of them are talking. They're both pretending that this is. Normal for them. When it's so clear that neither of them know what to do with the other. What with how the wolf's eyebrows twitch when first Stiles starts following him about. The huff of of relieved breath when Stiles keeps going home with him. Stiles thinks that they both must be replacements. For something. Stiles doesn't know what he's replacing and he tries to make Derek feel like he's the center of Stiles' world without letting him find out just how much he's become everything for Stiles. That he's the point Stiles fixates on, the only person to worry about other than himself. 

Although, really, would it be so bad? He thinks the werewolf looks at him in the same way, is playing the same game of hide and seek that Stiles is. Trying to be everything while burying the extent of his own need. Stiles can see it, though, what with how the guy appears to be obsessed with making him eat. Seems to be intent on fattening him up. Demonstrates his concern with every evening by checking make sure Stiles is still whole, runs his fingers over the scaring on Stiles head when Stiles takes off his hat. He tries to hide it, cover it up with a scowl, but Stiles can feel affection in the small smiles that creep onto his face when Stiles buries himself against Derek’s arms in a bed that’s become theirs.

And Stiles finds that he _likes_ to fixate, to check over Derek in return. Can't help but smile when Derek opens the door to the bar, slides into his usual stool toward the end of the night. FEels calmer when Derek follows him about during clean up and then takes him home. Stiles likes the comradery and enjoys the mutual reliance, of all things. The neediness and the support. He worries that perhaps he was co-dependent in his last life. 

Stiles knows it's stupid, that it's potentially dangerous. But he keeps telling himself he doesn't have anything left to loose anyhow. Other than his life, he supposes. 

But Stiles chose the werewolf because he wanted to play for keeps. 

So he doesn't hold back, makes sure to insert himself into every aspect of Derek's life, to fall against him, to breath on him, to keep in sight. To wrap himself up in Derek at night, as if Derek was his blanket, with Derek’s teeth on his neck. To spend his time away from work following Derek about, climbing into Derek’s car after him, going to the grocery store together before hitting up used book stores for stacks of paper backs that they read while leaning back-to-back or wrapped around each other.

Stiles knows that if he does this long enough than Derek will be incapable of hurting him. He'll imprint. See Stiles as pack, take care of Stiles as long as he can. Knows all he really has to do is give Derek the exact same in return. 

And it isn’t long, not really, before Stiles can't bear the thought of Derek leaving him, not anymore. Not now. Not when Derek is all Stiles has. And Stiles would think that was unfair, probably unhealthy, much too clingy, but he's still convinced that he's all Derek has too. And Derek never ever takes anything that isn't offered. Doesn't force anything on Stiles, just accepts everything Stiles gives.

\-----

Stiles thinks that maybe it was hunters who shot him. Because the first time he smells that telltale scent of gun oil and wolfsbane he feels his entire spine try to stiffen. He barely has the where-withall to keep his face relaxed and his smile sweet. He cards them and tracks where they put their wallets out of the corner of his eye. Notices the way their jackets fall over their weapons. How they case the place. 

Stiles thinks that maybe it was hunters because of the fear that rolls unbidden through his body, making it hard to keep his body loose, to not let them see what he knows. He thinks of Derek, about the soft wrinkles around his eyes and the way his feet curl together with Stiles’ while they sleep.

He waits until they're wrapped up in themselves, ignoring the wait-staff (so many people do) before he steals half the cash from their wallets. Just because. 

Stiles looks at Derek as he slides into the bar, sees when Derek notices that Stiles is feeling off even before he's actually seated. Derek is frowning, watching him out of the side of his eye. Stiles knows by now that Derek can read everything about him. Knows his different scents, knows his heart beat, knows the tics in his face and the way his shoulders tense. 

Stiles can tell because he knows Derek's as well. Derek's tics are Stiles' constants. Stiles thinks it goes both ways.

His eyes flicker to the group in the back, the hunters in the corner watching the bar. Derek's face doesn't change, he doesn't do anything as Stiles slides a nice, normal, human beer across the bar to him. 

The hunters try to hit Stiles up for information, try to buy him shots to get him loose and comfortable. Stiles lets them have information, tells them long, unfortunate stories about a patron who had decided to get circumcised at the age of 44. How the party had been touching. He tells them about how Ms. Kippen came in to gloat every day about well her shop was doing. 

Derek leaves after the one beer, exact change and a tip slid across the bar. He hasn't paid Stiles for a drink in ages. 

Stiles feels his heartbeat pick up, afraid. Terrified that perhaps, maybe, Derek thinks that Stiles brought them here. He hates the hunters passionately. Decides to be petty and uses unwashed glasses for their next order of drinks. 

But Derek is waiting for him outside when he pulls the mats out the back. He's standing in the alley, eyes glowing when Stiles pulls the door open and comes out. Stiles is dropping the mats before he consciously knows it and pressing himself into Derek, breathing hard, feeling Derek's cheek against his own. 

Stiles pulls back, looks at Derek, thinks of the shitty apartment room they've been sharing, about the cracked counters and cheap carpets. About how it's paid by the week and they've been there two months. How it doesn't look like Derek had ever planned on staying at all. "We could leave?" he asks, wondering if the hunters were a coincidence or if they're after either Stiles or Derek. Stiles doesn't know enough about either of them to be able to say. He hasn't been asking questions about Derek's past because that might lead to question about his own. The hunters could be a fluke, or Derek could be their number one most wanted, the last member of a huge family. Or maybe Stiles once infiltrated their ranks, betrayed them. Perhaps. Stiles doesn't know if they should stick around to find out. 

Stiles pretends he doesn't feel the tiny tremor of Derek's surprise. The flash of contemplation that crosses his face. He wonders if maybe Derek was waiting for him to leave, trying to hold on but ready to let go. 

So Stiles leans forward, presses his forehead against Derek's and tells him to just please, please, not to go anywhere without him. Stiles wonders if it still counts as playing someone when you mean it. Really, really mean it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you see errors, feel free to let me know.
> 
> And - aside from that - I would also be curious to know what you think of how it came together. There are three different backgrounds in my head for this one.


End file.
